


Greater Serpents and Lesser Vows

by MasterOfAllImagination



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Medieval, Don't copy to another site, M/M, francis-as-dragon, james-as-paladin, more tags to come, some beauty and the beast vibes
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-27
Updated: 2019-03-27
Packaged: 2019-12-18 17:29:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,002
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18254498
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MasterOfAllImagination/pseuds/MasterOfAllImagination
Summary: “This,” James says, longing to remove his gauntlet and wipe the sweat beading at his brow, “cannot be possible.”I could kill you, if I liked,the dragon declares, dripping annoyance.Then what is possible and what is not would cease to matter.





	Greater Serpents and Lesser Vows

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kamidog](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kamidog/gifts).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kami gave me the melody; all I did was write down the notes <3 You can check out his terribly apt and incredibly adorable art of dragon!Francis [here!](https://kami-ships-it.tumblr.com/post/183560034535/so-uhm)

“I think it will die soon,” the farmer says. He raises a hand to push back greying hair and shade his eyes as he looks northward.

James follows his gaze. A scraggly precipice, barely deserving of the term  _mountain,_  lies in that direction. He wets travel-dry lips. “Has someone already engaged with the beast, then?”

The farmer takes his time before continuing, as though considering his words carefully. “No. But it will die soon, all the same. It took one of my sheep not two days ago. Scrawny thing; barely worth the feed for the wool, and too old for the slaughter. A week before that, a single sow. Hasn’t taken so much as a field mouse since.”

“It’s starving,” James says.

“Aye. That, I’ll wager, will be its end; even without your sword to hasten things along.”

“Is it sick?”

“Couldn’t say.”

“Injured?”

“Haven’t seen.”

James bites the inside of his cheek and grasps for a question he can’t think to ask. As deeply versed in the Order’s library as he is, James knows of no reason why a greater serpent would fail to hunt.

Into the silence, the farmer says, “It’s gone to den in the mountain, I’d wager. Best be careful. They’re territorial, dragons are.”

* * *

In the time it takes James to pick through the foothills and gain the mountainside, dusk descends, slicking the stones beneath his boots with evening moisture. He plants his feet with extra care when he pauses to drink from his water skin. Far below, chimney smoke from the village dissipates into the cold air, and the low sun washes the neat fields in blue and grey and pink; a beauty surely gone unappreciated by whatever serpent has chosen to make this mountain its refuge. The farmer named it  _dragon_ , but James has his doubts on that score, for dragons delight in gorging on cattle—can cripple a holding’s herds for years to come—yet this one has taken only a sow and a sheep. It likely belongs to a lower order altogether A wyvern, James thinks, or something equally unimpressive.

He stands gazing southward long enough to track a noticeable shift in the shadows of the day before arranging his pack into a more comfortable position and moving on. Sweat cools beneath his helm and at the small of his back. He scours the scree and wild grasses of the rocky mountainside for signs of the creature’s den—or, at the very least, a sheltered crag suitable for setting up camp before nightfall.

Too much of the sun has bled from the world by the time he comes across a promising cavern. It looms as a darker smudge against greyness, the shapes of rocks blurring into the outlines of shrubs in the failing light. James barks his shin against a boulder in the half-light and winces wincing at the dull clang of his greaves. Even with his care, he soon stumbles into another; this time, with a muted thump. 

He hesitates. When he looks again, he sees the sad remnants of what can only be the farmer’s missing sheep. One shank is missing, as though it had been tasted, and then spat back out in dissatisfaction. James tilts a wary eye briefly skyward. He prods the carcass, gently, with the steel toe of one boot. Insects afflict the flesh, but no carrion; and more than a day old at that—some stronger, more threatening scent must lie upon it to mitigate the draw of fresh meat. He examines the rend. It is rather large, and the tear through muscle and bone rather clean, for a common wyvern. 

Excitement, and wariness, makes the hairs on the back of James’s neck stand up. He hums a bit to himself to fill the silence of the evening—a ditty he’d picked up several years ago in an alehouse.  Even a paladin of ignoble birth, largely unproven, might merit a song or two in his honor if he were to bring back tales of a true dragon.

One last reconnoiter, James decides, before he rests.

The air is damp inside the cavern. The farther he penetrates, the moreso it becomes. A hundred meters or so in, completely encased in darkness, he feels a breath of wind shift against his arms: a change in pressure from some larger chamber just ahead. It carries with it a very faintly peaty scent, tinged by something metallic. It is unlike anything James has encountered before.  A rush builds in his ears. The darkness becomes, if possible, even darker as his vision narrows and his hand clenches upon the grip of his sword. Only rote training enables him to loosen his knuckles and control his breathing. Where the fear recedes, anticipation trickles in, as tenuous and exhilarating as a boat rushing down a strong current. He waits for his eyes to adjust. When he can hold out his arm and count a row of chains in his gauntlet’s maille, he slings his shield from his back, squares his shoulders, and rounds the bend.

The ceiling of the cavern beyond yawns upward into indisctinction. Directly before him, the features of a large mound arranged on the floor gradually resolve themselves: first, a wedge-shaped head and long neck, resting, in the manner of a piteous dog, on clawed forelegs. Next, a ridged spine and torso covered in dull scales of an indeterminate color, in no way resembling the jeweled tones of myth and tapestry.

Its body, as long as a tree is tall, has a tail that stretches for at least that length again, curling back on itself within the cavern’s confines. Fear and thrill coil, hotly, within James's breast. The dragon appears as though sleeping—if he's swift, he can make quick work of it with a neat stab between the eyes—

—which blink open, revealing two bright spots of blue. 

 _Are you here to make an end of me?_ says a thought in James’s mind that isn’t his.

He reels.

Forsaking concealment, James sends up a magelight, flooding the cavern with illumination down to the smallest crevice. Spots blink across his vision. “Who goes there?” he bellows. A few small stones patter down from the ceiling.

The mind-voice speaks again.  _Only myself_.

“Is this a trick?” James demands. He draws his sword, looking desperately around the bright cavern for some hidden person—a sorcerer; a rogue paladin. There is no one. His magelight ebbs and draws back on itself, and something hisses. It takes James a moment to realize that the sound is that of the dragon's tail as it slides quickly along the floor. He steps back, a dozen spells at the ready in his head, and watches the dragon's muscles bunch and shift.  There isn’t enough room for it to stretch out fully in the too-small space.  Folding and unfolding, flexing and contracting its limbs, the dragon rearranges itself, thudding and scraping against the walls as it goes. Some of the harsher noises make James flinch with involuntary sympathy. When the dust settles, the dragon has put its back to the entrance—and James—and lies as still as stone once more.

 _Leave, if you’ve not the stomach to do it_ , says the voice. James has the horrible suspicion that it somehow emanates from the dragon itself.

“I will not,” James says, near reflexively. “As per my sworn oath as a paladin of the Holy Order—”

 _A paladin_ , says the dragon, quick and irritated, like a slap.  _So very like a paladin to play with his food before he eats it._

“Am I to receive etiquette lessons from a dragon which took one bite of its supper before casting the rest aside in the dirt?”

Immediately—crisply— _I am not a dragon_.

“You are very much a dragon,” James says, biting back his disbelieving laugh by the edge of his teeth. The absurdity of bantering words with a creature whose only delights are killing, and eating; and not necessarily in that order, are beginning to dawn on him.

 _I am not a dragon_ , the dragon says again, with such forceful insistence within James’s mind that his vision momentarily fuzzes at the edges.  _I still remember what it is to taste a well-seasoned cut of mutton. That animal was far from it._

James calculates. He comes up short. “Only men eat mutton,” he says, bereft of any other protest, “and you are as far from a man as it is possible for a creature to be.”

The dragon bends down its long neck to James’s height, bringing him level with robin’s-egg eyes which regard him with a doleful and disarmingly human gaze. Bitterly, the dragon says,  _I believe that was the intent of my curse_. The voice—that  _voice_ —is warm and deep, reminiscent of those peoples born and raised in the western holdings.

“Only men eat mutton,” James says again, but there is no conviction in it. Slowly, he opens the visor of his helm with the back of his hand and peers hard at the dragon. Only the most treacherous of sorcery can bind a man into the form of a serpent—an unthinkable punishment, even against the vilest criminals—and certainly impracticable by any but the most talented of the Order’s ranks. James cannot credit any member with even contemplating, let alone carrying out, such a thing. “This,” James says, longing to remove his gauntlet and wipe the sweat beading at his brow, “cannot be possible.”

 _I could kill you, if I liked,_ the thing declares, dripping annoyance.  _Then what is possible and what is not would cease to matter_.

James is suddenly conscious of the mere handful of feet separating himself and a dangerous maw filled with fangs the length of his handspan; and claws sharp enough to open a man to the spine at a slice. He has entered here as conqueror, and paid no mind to the possibility that he might not emerge as such; or even at all.

Yet neither he nor the beast make any move other than to breathe. The maw stays shut. The claws remain dug  into the dirt. There is more that is brittle than brutal about the dragon’s words—and about its bones, if the dragon's thinness is any indication. What power can this underfed thing bring to bear that James, with all his training, cannot parry? He can count its ribs. He'd read, once, that a blade plunged between the third and fourth is the quickest way to a dragon’s heart—though he suspects that it is not a dragon’s heart beating within the beast before him, after all, but a man’s. A resentful and ill-tempered man—but so would James be, he fancies, if he himself was cursed to exist in such a loathsome form.

He rolls his jaw. In a reasonable sort of voice, James makes himself say, “Might I at least know the name of the thing which purports to kill me?”

The dragon keeps its silence for long enough that James worries he has made a serious error in judgement.

Eventually—in an utterly incurious and rather resigned way—it says,  _I should ask likewise_.

Warily, James at last sheathes his sword. He lays his shield against a rock, removes his helm completely, and makes a formal bow, feeling more and more exposed with each layer of armor divested. “Sir James Fitzjames,” he names himself. “I’ve yet to decide whether or not it is my honor to make your acquaintance.”

The dragon regards him blandly. Limb by limb, it tucks into itself, covered entirely by its leathery wings and leaving only the tip of its tail free to twitch slightly. One eye looms above the level of its forearm.  _Francis_ , he says, and nothing more.

After a moment, James tries, “Francis.”

Francis’s forked tongue flicks the air lazily. His eye falls shut.

Divested of his armor, fear and excitement quickly draining, James feels acutely how cold it has become within the cave. It will be full night outside, and here he still stands, unable to carry out his orders and unwilling to leave. He’d given his word to the High Priest—knelt before him, kissed the signet ring—that he would slay this serpent. He had spoken the words  _I will see it done. You’ve only to name which part you’d best like to see brought back as a trophy_.

He had been given no remit to learn its name, nor to engage it in conversation. Far easier to slay a monster than to contemplate severing bits from a clammy, starving, semi-human named  _Francis_.

James’s pity only intensifies as his empty stomach makes itself audibly known. It has only been a few hours since James supped—how long for Francis? A fortnight is not so unendurable a time to live as a dragon, in James’s opinion; but a very long time, regardless of species, to go without food.

The hour is late. James is tired enough not to relish the idea of blundering across the dark mountainside in search of another cave in which to more politely eat his dinner. Better to ask forgiveness than permission. He slings his pack from his shoulders and kneels, drawing out a loaf of hearty bread and some root vegetables. A large pouch of jerked beef. He feels eyes on the back of his neck when he removes this last, and glances up, sharply. The single blue eye is fixed upon him again.

“I cannot feed you,” James says, spreading his hands wide before him, as if to apologize for their emptiness.

 _You’re much too thin_ , Francis agrees.

The ease of the retort brings a smile to James’s face. “You’d be an expert on the subject, I suppose,” he says, “though I daresay you could use a good—” _cow, or three_ — “meal of your own.”

 _Many would starve if I were to hunt my fill. And I cannot stand to feel the blood of raw meat sliding down my throat_.

Halfway through unwrapping his bread, James stills. He imagines the fresh juices of a good cut of roast filling his mouth, and then he imagines more, and more; all of it raw and iron-tanged. James swallows hard. He gropes for words. “Unfortunate,” he rasps, despising the platitude as soon as it leaves his lips. “That is—I mean only that—” James cuts himself off.

Much as expected, Francis says nothing.

James carefully puts a chunk of bread into his mouth. “Perhaps there exists a middle ground,” he offers.

_I don't see how it's any concern of yours._

“It certainly doesn’t seem to be one of  _yours_. At least one of us must take it under consideration.”

If a dragon were capable of scoffing, James imagines Francis would do so—his exhale brings that human expression sharply to mind.  _Must we, indeed,_ Francis says.

“I have been ordered here to slay you. By the High Priest himself, no less. You realize this, do you not? And that there are others less apt to hesitate in doing so if I do not return with proof of your death ”

_Let them._

In the face of such obstinacy, James is momentarily baffled. He drums his fingers against his cuirass. To  _slay_ , meaning to bring about the end of a dragon's existence. He looks up. “What would it take to make you as you once were?”

Francis’s claws flex. Four large gashes appear, with a crunching noise, in the floor.  _It cannot be done._

“Of course it—”

 _I said it cannot be done_.  The words seem to quiver as they press into his mind: unsteady and miserable. If a thought could shiver, this one does.

James automatically draws his cloak closer around himself. “But if it  _could_  be done—"

 _It is not_ _—_

"Not my concern, yes, but _—"_   talking over one’s own thoughts is a strange feeling, yet James does his best _—_  “I am  _ordered._  It is not a formality that can be put aside at the end of the day. A paladin cannot lie to the High Priest.” He pauses. “Nor can I, a man, allow you to remain in this cave and starve.” James stands up from the cold ground and struggles briefly for his bearings. He does not know which part of Francis to approach, much less touch—a dragon has no shoulder upon which to offer a brotherly clasp—so he settles for the nearest knee. Francis’s scales are brittle and unexpectedly chilly. Francis shrinks away, but, penned as pathetically as he is, there is only so far he can retreat.

James threads his other hand through his hair. “Something must be done,” he says, yet the only thing he can think to do, at that moment, is to shrug largely. “A question for the morning, I suppose.” He hesitates. Conscious that to do so is tantamount to advancing upon a cornered animal, James reaches again, this time to touch the very tips of Francis’s leathery wings. The texture is fascinating—supple, yet thick—and James moves his fingertips curiously over it, unable to help himself.

 _James,_ Francis says. It is quietly done this time.  _I am hungry._

It is the first time he has said his name. Strange, yet not unwelcome, to hear his own name spoken within his mind by a foreign voice.

“You do not have to be,” James says.

There is silence, of a kind. The indeterminate sounds of a mountain cave are audible at the edges of James's hearing. They are not overlaid with Francis's voice again. 

James goes back to his small circle of belongings. He eats without tasting, his thoughts otherwise occupied with ways and means. It sounds like a cruel joke— _how does one man feed a dragon?_ —and it may end up being one for them both if James cannot devise a solution.

At some point in the night, Francis’s breathing evens out into a low rush of air. Its has a constant and soothing quality, like wind. James sleeps despite himself.


End file.
